Falling Over Sideways

by Jordan Sonnenblick

  I felt really guilty for thinking it.

  But then I was like, Claire Bear? Really? Am I five? And I got annoyed again.

  Meanwhile, Matthew hadn’t said a word. He hadn’t asked any questions, or scolded me for not answering his call, or even complained about anything. He was still sitting there, staring upward, with a completely blank look on his face.

  I reached out and put my hand next to his. He looked down at my hand, grabbed it, and squeezed so hard it sort of hurt. Then he turned to me, swallowed, and asked, “Was Dad in a lot of pain? Did he seem scared?”

  I looked in Matthew’s eyes and saw something that stunned me: They were full of tears.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think it hurt, really. Mostly, I think he was confused. And, um, agitated. Like he didn’t understand what was going on, but he knew he didn’t like it.”

  When Mom came back, I asked whether there was any news, and she said, “Not yet. Apparently, they’re still doing tests.”

  “But, Mom, you have to make them hurry! Time is brain! If he doesn’t get TPA within the next”—I looked at my phone for the time—“seventy-two minutes, it’s going to be too late!”

  “What are you talking about, Claire?”

  “It’s a drug that dissolves blood clots. But it’s only useful within the first three hours after a stroke. Please, Mom. They have to hurry!”

  “Your father is with a whole medical team that specializes in stroke care. If he’s having a stroke, I’m sure they know what to do.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. Waiting is hard, but sometimes there’s nothing else we can do. Maybe we should try to distract ourselves. Do you want to play a word game? Names, maybe? Or Geography?”

  I worked my hand out of Matthew’s, stood up, and walked away to fill my empty hot-chocolate cup at a water fountain.

  Behind me, I heard Matthew say, “Geography? Seriously?”

  I was glad he was sticking up for me, but at the same time, I felt sorry for him. If Mom was the one who never believed anything bad was happening, Matthew was the one who thought every little thing was a disaster. He must have been even more worried than I was.

  As I came back, the lead guy who had been working on my father walked out into the waiting room. “Mrs. Goldsmith?” he asked Mom. She nodded. “I’m Dr. Raj Venkersammy. I am a neurologist on the stroke team here at the hospital. I need some information really quickly so that we can make an urgent decision with regard to your husband’s treatment.”

  Then he went through Dad’s medical history in incredible detail. If there was one thing I learned that day, it’s that words like hurry and urgent don’t really mean the same thing at a hospital that they do everywhere else. When he happened to look in my direction, I interrupted and mentioned the time when Dad’s symptoms had started. The doctor asked Mom several more questions about that, and then sighed.

  “What?” Mom asked. “What is it?”

  “Well, it looks as though your husband threw a clot. A few minutes ago, we got the report on the wet read of his CT scan, and there is definitely an occlusion in his middle cerebral artery.”

  “What does that all mean?”

  “A stroke, Mrs. Goldsmith. Your husband is suffering the effects of a moderate-size stroke. I will answer more questions later, but right now I have to get back in there and get him started on a clot-busting drug.”

  He turned on his heels and practically sprinted back through the double doors. Finally, somebody was hurrying visibly! Of course, that probably just meant my father was in really awful shape.

  Mom sat down and started rubbing her hands together. It looked like she was trying to start a fire using her fingers for tinder. I had never seen my ice-calm mother look so agitated before.

  “Well, Claire, it looks like your father is having a stroke,” she said.

  I had never been so unhappy to be proven right.

  It is amazing how much your brain races when you literally have nothing to do. Matthew and I sat in that stupid little waiting room for hours. Mom came and went. Sometimes she got called away to answer questions at the desk, sometimes she talked with medical people, and sometimes she stepped outside the hospital to make phone calls. But we just sat there.

  So, what was there to do? Well, we watched people. Believe me, there’s some eye-catching people drama in the emergency department. We saw three different people barfing into little handheld basins that the check-in people had given them on arrival. We saw an old drunk guy with a gigantically swollen bump above one eye. Even from several seats away, he reeked of alcohol. There was an elderly lady with him, dressed in a filthy bathrobe and fuzzy slippers. She kept trying to hold an ice pack to his bump, but then he would yell at her, “I got this! I got this!” As soon as she let go, he would drop the ice pack, and the whole cycle would start again. Oh, and then there was the thumb dude. He was maybe twenty-five years old, with one thumb wrapped up in a huge, blood-soaked ball of gauze bandages. His thumb looked like a red Q-tip.

  A nurse had walked him to a seat facing us from two rows away, and told him to keep applying constant pressure to the wound, no matter what. But once every twenty minutes or so, he would pull away a corner of the gauze to peek at his thumb. A half second later, a geyser of blood would go pumping straight up into the air, like an oil well in a cartoon. So he would clamp down again.

  There weren’t a whole lot of quick learners in the ER that day. Maybe the quick learners don’t end up there, as a rule. Aside from my father.

  Anyway, the casualties kept piling up, because about an hour after my mom and Matthew got there, Bil and Kathy’s ambulance came screeching up to the doors with another right beside it, and tons of hospital people came hustling over from all directions to meet them. Several patients came zooming through on gurneys, and a few of them made our dad look like a “before” picture. We’re talking tubes, monitors, bandages, splints, wires—one person wasn’t even visible at all, because he (or she) was surrounded by so many rescue workers. Someone actually yelled, “Clear!” just like in a movie, and then, before I could see anything else, the whole bizarre scene went banging away through the Double Doors of Doom.

  Matthew and I just looked at each other for a moment, and then he said, “Well, that looked uncomfortable.”

  I almost giggled. One thing about Matthew: He is a genius at the art of understatement.

  At some point, my mom’s parents showed up. After a round of extremely awkward, silent hugs, Grandpa Ken asked, “So, are you kids hungry? Can we get you some food? Your mom said you haven’t eaten anything since breakfast.” I asked him what time it was, and was completely shocked to learn that it was after two in the afternoon. I had been at the hospital for going on five hours.

  But was I hungry? I hadn’t even thought about it. I mean, I was in a room full of sick, puking, blood-gushing, dying people. The smell alone would have put me out of the eating business indefinitely on a normal day.

  However, this wasn’t a normal day. “Yes, please,” I said. “But I don’t want to go anywhere, in case our father needs us or something.”

  “Matthew?” Grandma said.

  “Sure,” my brother said.

  “All right, we’ll go up to the cafeteria and see what they have. I’d imagine there’s some pizza or something.”

  We both said that was fine, which was another indication of how abnormal this day was. Usually, Matthew would have worried about the health benefits and nutritional value of his lunch, asked for fruits and vegetables, told our grandparents to be sure to bring him some milk for strong bones and teeth, and nitpicked in about ten different ways. But he just agreed to cafeteria pizza and went right back to sitting still.

  Or not really sitting still. His leg was shaking up and down super fast.

  When the doctor came out and said, “Mrs. Goldsmith?” Matthew jumped up like a rocket. I texted Mom, and she came back inside. We all stood there in a tiny, tense circle, staring at the man until he said, “Y
ou may see the patient for a few moments now. But then we are going to have to perform some more procedures before we can move him upstairs to the intensive care unit.”

  Intensive care? That sounded bad. Everything sounded bad. The night before, I had been screaming at him about my dance problems.

  Dance problems. How pathetic was that? Compared to what had happened since I’d woken up, dance problems just sounded like a giant oxymoron. Like, newsflash: If you’re dancing, there are no problems.

  And—God! I had been screaming at him. The last major thing I had said rang in my head: Well, maybe you need to struggle some more! I was probably the worst person in the hospital. I was, potentially, the worst person in town. I thought, What if strokes are caused by stress? I mean, what could be more stressful than having your awful daughter tell you she wishes you would struggle more?

  We followed Dr. Venkersammy through the chaos of the open ER area and into a small room with a glassed-off front. Dad was in a bed there, and a woman was standing beside him, checking all kinds of gauges and monitor screens. He looked much worse than he had before. His face was almost purple, and there was a big plastic tube jammed into his mouth, secured in place with strips of thick-looking tape. His eyes were slitted almost shut.

  My father looked like an old, old man. You might have even said he was struggling.

  Matthew let out a high-pitched whimper and stepped past me. Then he leaned over as far as he could and buried his face in our father’s lap. The machines were making all sorts of hissing sounds, but I was pretty sure I heard Matthew say, “Daddy.” It was extremely quiet and muffled by blankets, but what struck me the most was that Matthew didn’t sound at all like himself. He sounded like a little kid.

  I had this crazy thought: Nobody’s the right age today.

  Dr. Venkersammy told us we could stay for only a few minutes but that we should feel free to “speak with your loved one as though he understands you. He cannot say anything right now, of course, but that does not mean he is not listening.”

  I moved forward so I was next to Matthew, standing over our father’s knees. I wanted to say something helpful or something brave. Something useful and mature. But nothing came. I stood and stood and stood there, but my lips wouldn’t move. Mom stepped up from behind and put one arm around me and the other around Matthew. “It’s all right, Claire Bear. Just say anything. Your father loves you. He’ll just love the sound of your voice.”

  Her voice sounded like it was about to crack.

  I tried to say something. But my throat was closed. I felt like someone had jammed something hot, dry, and sticky down into it—sideways. Dad looked right up at me. It was like he was begging me to speak, but nothing came.

  The machines hummed, Matthew sobbed, Mom made reassuring noises, and I said nothing. Then the nurse said, “Okay, folks, I’m going to send you back out to the waiting room. Mr. Goldsmith’s blood pressure is inching up a bit, so I have to call the doctor back in. Don’t you worry—we’re keeping a good eye on every little thing in here.”

  And that was it. Mom steered us out of the room. Halfway down the hall, my throat opened up, and I whispered to nobody at all, “I’m so sorry.”

  Back out in the waiting room, Grandma and Grandpa were standing over a takeout box. “Any news?” Grandma asked.

  “Not really,” Mom replied.

  “Got your food,” Grandpa said. “Hungry?”

  “Uh-huh,” Matthew grunted.

  Swell, I thought. My father has a stroke, and the rest of my family starts talking like cavemen.

  The waiting area had started to empty out, which was kind of a plus for eating purposes. We munched through our food in silence. The pizza was about what you’d expect from a hospital cafeteria, but, thankfully, Grandma knew my brother really well, so she had also gotten us two apples, two milks, and a bottle of grape juice to share. That was a huge plus, because even a cafeteria can’t do too much to ruin milk, juice, or apples.

  While we were eating, the strangest thing happened. My grandparents started chattering away with my mother as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on. I guess they were probably trying to distract her, but I wanted to chuck my pizza crust at somebody’s head. There they were, rattling away about how their garden was shaping up for fall, while my father was fighting for his life less than a hundred feet away.

  Matthew tapped me on the leg, and said, “You know what’s weird? When we were little, I always thought Dad was the strongest person on earth. Didn’t you?”

  I pictured swimming into his arms at the community center pool, and nodded.

  “When he was teaching me how to throw a baseball, or how to catch, or how to hit—any of it—I just felt like he was Superman. Like he could do anything. And then one time, I was pitching baseballs to him in the backyard when I was eight or something, and I bounced one. It took a strange hop and came up right into Dad’s, um, most sensitive area.”

  I wasn’t sure where Matthew was going with this story. I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out, either.

  “So Dad basically keeled over to the right in slow motion. I ran over and shouted, ‘Daddy, are you okay?’ He was like, ‘I’m fine, son. Just go inside the house. I’ll be there in a little while.’ I said, ‘Should I get Mommy?’ He looked up at me, and his jaw was clenched. He said, ‘Just get in the freaking HOUSE!’ ”

  I still didn’t get it. “Soooo … you’re saying … ?”

  Matthew sighed. “Dad wouldn’t have wanted us to see him looking like that, Claire. He must hate this.”

  I leaned my head on my brother’s shoulder. On the other side of me, Grandma was asking Mom whether she had any good recipes for squash-and-apple casserole.

  “Ahem,” Dr. Venkersammy said. Somehow he had managed to maneuver himself within three feet of the whole family without anyone even noticing. He must have thought we were the least caring next of kin he had ever seen, babbling about baseballs and recipes while our loved one was … was … well, we didn’t know what was going on at the moment.

  “Doctor, is there news?” Mom asked.

  He cleared his throat again. “Yes. In fact, I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”

  If there were a nuclear holocaust, my mom would send me to school the next day. Everybody else would be hiding in their basements, sealed away with duct tape, eating canned peaches and beef jerky, but I’d be the one kid marching through the fallout past all the burned-out cars, the bodies, and the radioactive looters so I could be the only kid in jazz band.

  Well, okay, Ryder would probably show up, too, just to spite me.

  But, anyway, Mom sent Matthew and me to school on the Monday after the stroke because she said there was no use in our sitting around the hospital, moping. Matthew was so tired after spending most of the weekend watching a machine force air in and out of Dad’s lungs that he just went along with everything Mom said, but I tried to argue a little bit, because I couldn’t stand to leave my father’s bedside. Mom just gave me a look I had never seen from her before, kind of like “Don’t mess with me! My husband is in a medically induced coma!”

  To be fair, how often does one get a chance to convey all that with a look?

  So I went to school. I hadn’t told anybody about the stroke. It seemed terrible to say it over social media or by text, and I was afraid I would cry if I said it out loud, so I’d just ignored several texts from my friends over the weekend. Every step of my walk felt like a mile. I was dreading having to deal with everyone’s reactions to the news, but even more, I just kept worrying about what might happen to my father while I wasn’t there. The doctor had said the first several days were the most dangerous time for stroke patients. Apparently, now that the original blood clot had dissolved, we still had to worry about another stroke, or pneumonia, or a heart attack, or bleeding ulcers, or a million other things. Dad could even get a bedsore and then die of an infection from that.

  But sure, I was going to focus on polynomial factoring and
whatnot.

  At my locker, I was greeted warmly by the lovely Ryder, who said, “Hey, Goldsmith! Guess what? I just did my chair audition. I nailed all the mandatory major scales, some minors, some blues scales … I practiced all weekend. I know, I know … I’m awesome. You probably spent your weekend dancing or something, right?”

  I stared at him and tried not to either (A) cry or (B) grab his throat and squeeze until his eyes popped out like champagne corks.

  “So anyway, you might as well practice six or seven scales, because that’s about right for your level. I just thought you’d want to be reminded of your sad, feeble place in the universe.”

  As soon as he scurried away to his locker like the loathsome vermin he was, Roshni appeared. “Hey,” she said. “Your pimple cleared up!”

  I touched my nose and realized that was true. Not that she had necessarily needed to announce it to the hallway at large.

  “But why have you been ignoring my texts? Are you mad because I didn’t yell at Ryder and Regina at lunch the other day? My parents always tell me I should be more forceful. Is that what it was? If it is, I’m sorry. I just get so flustered when people are angry and—”

  “Roshni, it wasn’t anything you did.”

  “Is your phone broken? I told you to convince your parents to get you a smartphone. They have the money. I don’t know why they make you walk around with that cheap plastic—”

  “Roshni, my phone works fine!”

  “Then what is it?”

  I bit my lip. Some things are just really hard to say. Like “I’m having my period.” Or “Ryder actually is good at playing the sax.” Or, evidently, “My father had a stroke and can’t breathe on his own.” I took a deep breath.

  Regina walked up from behind me and said, “Hey, Goldsmith! I just heard about your father. That sucks.”

  Roshni said, “Oh my God! What happened to your dad?”

  I stood there like a moron, trying to find the right words.